Photo by: Stephen Kline

All right Mason Nation, we’ve concluded the regular season. Overall we’re 25-5, 16-2 in the CAA and an undefeated home record complete with big heads of Cam and Ike. Next comes the CAA Championship Tournament down in Richmond, Va. Since we play in less than a week against the winner of UNC-Wilmington and George State, I don’t have much time to finalize the trip plans.

The plans start with an early wake up on Saturday morning to start heading down 95 with my roommate Mark. Once we get down to Richmond, we are heading right to Penny Lane Pub, the official Mason Nation Headquarters. After the pregame excitement, we’ll head over to the Coliseum to watch Mason win their first game of the tourney. Once the first W is in the books, its back to PLP for the postgame celebrations with our fellow fans.

It looks as of right now that we are the only team that seems to have locked into a bid to the NCAA Tournament. ODU has an extremely compelling case, which looks pretty good for them. However, all other teams must win the tournament to get in. With the CAA being a mid-major school, it’ll be surprising to see two schools in, but three is a stretch. The only way I see three CAA teams potentially getting in would be ODU playing VCU in the championship, and VCU winning. Well, since we are obviously going to be wearing the rings and cutting the nets down come March 7, it sure looks like there will be only two teams in.

As far as the NCAA tourney goes, well, I’ve got plans to travel to most of the venues. As of Feb. 25 ESPN’s Bracketology with Joe Lunardi, we are projected as a 7 seed playing the 10 seed of Illinois. (On a side note, I’m currently looking to change my major to bracketology…college of humanities and social sciences perhaps?) Good news is we are projected at a 7 seed, but the bad news is that the game would be in Denver. Luckily, a major factor playing into our seeding will be our performance in the CAA tournament. Hopefully the higher the seed we get, the closer we will be to Fairfax.

My roommates and I have figured out we can drive to five out of the eight venues hosting the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. These places include: Cleveland, Washington DC, Chicago, Tampa and Charlotte. Even though three cities seem too far to drive to, all airfare options will be fully checked to see what we can make happen. Any place that Mason plays, “GMU what” will be ringing in the arenas.

The bottom line is that once selection Sunday comes around Patriots, we’ve got to be ready to dance!